frozen burger – Tasty Burgers

Johnny’s Hamburgers

Published on July 21, 2019July 26, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2595 Victoria Park Avenue, Scarborough
Website: http://johnnyshamburgers.com/

Look, I don’t want to be the buzzkill telling people that the place they love actually sucks. Especially with a restaurant like Johnny’s, which has been slinging burgers since before most of its clientele were born.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. A lot of people have been going to Johnny’s since they were kids, and I get it: if you have warm, fuzzy memories of a place from your childhood, of course you’re going to overlook its flaws.

Because here’s the thing: that place you love, Johnny’s? It sucks. And I think deep down, you know that’s true.

Though it’s still popular, the city has (mostly) gotten over its collective delusion that Johnny’s is good. Most of the time now, when people post about Johnny’s on social media, they’ll preface it with something like “I know it’s junk, but…”

That wasn’t always true. Before the burger boom hit the city over the last decade or so, Johnny’s frequently appeared on — and topped, no less — lists of the best burgers in the GTA. That doesn’t happen anymore.

I still remember going there for the first time something like 15 years ago, having heard so much about how “good” it was. The crushing disappointment I experienced on taking my first bite was palpable.

It’s a bottom-of-the-barrel industrially-produced frozen patty. It’s bad.

It’s so bad that I managed to avoid reviewing it for the last eight years of running this blog, despite the fact that it’s a Toronto burger institution. It should have been one of the first places I reviewed. But their burgers are a bummer to eat. I didn’t want to.

I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever, however. Eventually, I’d have to bite the bullet. And I finally did.

On this particular visit, I got the plain burger (cheese and bacon are also options) and had it topped with pickles, tomato, mayo, and griddled onions.

There’s not much to like about the el cheapo frozen patties they serve here. They have a chewy, borderline mushy texture that’s closer to a lousy hot dog than a hamburger, and any beefy flavour is basically nonexistent. The only flavour here, aside from the generically salty hot dogginess, is that mildly gamy flavour you get from the absolute cheapest meat imaginable.

Johnny’s defenders will typically expound on the burger’s unique flame-broiled flavour, but on this particular visit there were almost no grill marks on the patty, and zero smoky flavour. So they managed to mess up the one good thing the place has going for it.

The other thing people bring up to defend Johnny’s is the price; the burger is currently $4.01 before tax. That’s cheap, but it’s not that cheap. A no-frills burger from a nicer fast food joint like A&W or Wendy’s is about the same price and is much better. Or for a couple of bucks more, you can go somewhere like the Burger’s Priest and get a burger that’s about a million times better.

The bun’s not bad, I’ll give it that. It’s way too big for the patty, and it’s certainly not a typical hamburger bun. But it’s soft and fresh, and has a nice lightly crispy exterior. It’s not a cheapo supermarket bun. They obviously get it from an actual bakery.

As for the sides, I tried both the onion rings and the fries, and they’re both exactly what you think they’re going to be. They’re not great, but they’re a hell of a lot better than the burger.

1 out of 4

George the Greek

Published on June 18, 2017 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 3575 Lake Shore Boulevard West, Etobicoke
Website: http://eatatgeorgethegreek.com/

So, it turns out it’s actually not a great idea to go to a restaurant based on one post from some random guy on a message board. Who knew! (What? That’s just common sense? Literally everyone knew that? Hmm.)

George the Greek is one of those really old school places that has two types of burgers on the menu: a cheap hamburger (i.e. a bottom-of-the-barrel frozen patty) and a more expensive “homeburger” (which, logic dictates, is one that they make themselves).

I ordered the homeburger, only to find that George the Greek has pulled a C & Dubbs — it’s also a frozen burger. It’s one of the thicker, premium varieties of frozen burger, but a frozen burger is a frozen burger: rubbery hot dog texture with a mildly unpleasant, salty, off-meat flavour.

If you could see me right now, you’d see that I’m giving a very vigorous thumbs down while making a farting noise.

The burger had a pleasant, mild smoky flavour from the grill, and the toppings were fine (I went with pickles, tomato and mayo — and the mayo was actually mayo, not Miracle Whip, which a frequent and unwelcome substitution at old school joints like this. So that was nice.). The bun was pretty good too — it was standard supermarket fare, but it suited the burger quite well.

Alas, there isn’t much you can do to make a lousy patty like this particularly palatable.

As for the fries, they were slightly better than the hamburger, but they were a bit undercooked and completely unseasoned.

1.5 out of 4

The Opera House Grill

Published on December 20, 2015December 20, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 737 Queen Street East, Toronto
Website: https://www.facebook.com/theoperahousegrill/

I’m going to keep this one relatively brief. If you’ve read my recent rant about the Opera House Grill’s inclusion on Toronto Life’s new list of the city’s 25 best burgers, then you already pretty much know what I think about this burger: it’s made with a frozen patty, and it doesn’t belong within a million miles of any kind of “best of” list.

Still, that’s not to say that it’s the worst thing ever. It’s actually pretty okay, as far as frozen burgers go. The Shaggy Burger (the one that made Toronto Life’s list) is an impressively ridiculous behemoth of a burger. Piled high with sweet griddled onions, crispy onion rings, bacon, tsatziki, and a healthy mound of cheddar cheese, not to mention the standard burger toppings like lettuce, pickles, and tomato, it’s pretty much the definition of a kitchen sink burger.

And I won’t lie: it’s pretty good in the middle. It’s topping overload, but everything in the pile is fairly tasty, and it all tastes pretty good together. The big mound of shredded cheddar cheese never quite melts as much as it needs to, but aside from that the toppings are solid.

Where the burger really falls apart (figuratively — the bun held up surprisingly well to all the toppings) is around the perimeter of the burger, where all of the many condiments begin to fade away. That’s when you really taste that hot-doggy, mediocre frozen patty, and realize that greatness is simply never going to be in this burger’s vocabulary.

As for the fries, they clearly came out of the same freezer as the burger patty, and were about as middling as you’d expect.

2 out of 4

Toronto Life’s New List of the 25 Best Burgers in the City is a Joke

Published on December 6, 2015December 20, 2015 by Michael Nusair4 Comments

tolife2015
Incendiary headline, I know. Here’s why.

Toronto Life recently unveiled a brand new list of the 25 best burgers in the city, to compliment the one they published back in 2012. I was looking through it the other day, and something caught my eye: the Opera House Grill’s Shaggy burger — Toronto Life’s 25th best burger in the city — looked suspiciously like it came out of a box.

I figured that couldn’t possibly be the case, but I went there just to check.

The burger was indeed made with a frozen, industrially-produced patty. You know, the ones with a rubbery, hot-dog-like texture and a generic, vaguely unpleasant meaty flavour? Yeah, one of those. It’s very close if not identical to the ones they serve at distinguished eateries like Cineplex movie theatres and El Furniture Warehouse (the restaurant where everything costs five bucks).

That’s one of the best burgers in the city, apparently.

This is the equivalent of ranking the best movies of all time and including Paul Blart: Mall Cop, or ranking the best bands and including the Baha Men, or ranking the best shows and including Suddenly Susan.

Bringing this back to food, it would be like including a dish sauced with Prego in a list of the best bowls of pasta in the city, or including a Pinty’s product among the best fried chicken, or including Taco Bell among the best taco joints.

I’m belabouring the point, but I feel like I need to make why this is so egregious and galling to me crystal clear.

I’d imagine that the author of the list was won over by the impressively voluminous pile of toppings — tasty stuff like griddled onions, bacon, and onion rings — and didn’t know enough or care enough to realize that the burger patty itself (i.e. the entire reason to eat a hamburger) was so shoddy.

Of course, publications like Toronto Life have always been more about the toppings than anything else — in fact, the cursory, one-sentence-at-best treatment that the patty gets in most mainstream burger reviews is a big part of why I started this blog in the first place. But even by that standard, this is absurd.

I’m a burger snob, I know. You’re probably thinking, “what the hell is he getting so worked up about??” But to me, once you’ve called something that I can buy in the freezer section at No Frills one of the best burgers in the city, that’s that. You’ve lost all credibility.

So yeah, I’m done, Toronto Life. I guess I’ll miss out on your next hot tip: this little place called Manchu Wok that serves the best Chinese food in the city.

Galito’s

Published on September 27, 2015September 27, 2015 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 5200 Dixie Road, Unit 55, Mississauga
Website: http://www.galitoschicken.com/

In my continuing quest to check out any halfway decent burger near my work (which is no easy task when you work in Mississauga, a horrifying burger wasteland), I did my semi-regular “best burger in Mississauga” search, and found a top 15 by Foursquare. Number 13 on that list: Galito’s.

Wait, Galito’s? That Galito’s? The peri peri chicken joint? Do they even have a burger on the menu?

Apparently they do. I was fairly certain it was going to be bad (because why does that place even serve a burger??), but I figured, sure – why the hell not?

Ordering a hamburger here is so bizarre that I was honestly a little bit embarrassed even asking for it; I glanced around furtively as I ordered, like a guy buying a Hustler at a convenience store.

I was asked how spicy I wanted it, which certainly isn’t a question you expect when ordering a burger. I thought, at the very least, that this might be interesting.

Well, I don’t know what I was expecting, but what I got was a run-of-the-mill frozen patty – grilled – that had been slathered in peri peri sauce. It was also topped with lettuce, tomato, and onion.

The frozen patty was what it was: with its chewy texture and anemic flavour, it’s identical to the hamburger you’ll find at any number of crappy old-school burger joints, hospital cafeterias, and company picnics. The spicy, lemony peri peri sauce adds some heat and some zip, which kind of helps, but there’s no saving a patty like this.

The burger came with one side — I went with the peri peri fries, which were just mediocre frozen fries that were dusted with some kind of peri peri seasoning. With the hamburger, I can barely even blame them for going the frozen route – no one but a madman would order a hamburger from a restaurant that otherwise so single-mindedly specializes in chicken. The fries, on the other hand, I have a much harder time forgiving them for.

1.5 out of 4